Fat people told to swallow the truth

Susan Burke of Portland, Oregon, after losing weight on Siebold’s program. Burke and her husband Bryan lost a collective 141.5 pounds in 2013, using Siebold’s methods.Submitted
/ Vancouver Sun

Author Steve Siebold says the recent announcement that fat-positive groups are lobbying for a fat Barbie is driving him crazy. ‘All we are doing is saying it’s OK to have diabetes, heart disease and eat yourself to death. It’s giving up on the problem because people are afraid to face the truth,’ he says.

Bryan Burke of Portland, Oregon, after losing weight on Siebold’s program. Burke and his wife Susan lost a collective 141.5 pounds in 2013 using Siebold’s methods.Submitted
/ Vancouver Sun

Author Steve Siebold says fat people eat for pleasure and fit people eat for health.

Bryan Burke of Portland, Oregon, before he began Siebold’s weight loss program.

Susan Burke of Portland, Oregon, after losing weight on Siebold’s program. Burke and her husband Bryan lost a collective 141.5 pounds in 2013, using Siebold’s methods.

Susan Burke of Portland, Oregon, before she began Siebold’s weight loss program.

Bryan Burke of Portland, Oregon, after losing weight on Siebold’s program. Burke and his wife Susan lost a collective 141.5 pounds in 2013 using Siebold’s methods.

Related

Steve Siebold doesn’t think he is the most hated man in America, but his stance on obesity has generated pushback that ranges from disdain to death threats. His message is simple, but not popular: Obesity is not a disease, it is a choice and there are things you can do to change it.

Like work on changing your mind in order to change your body.

The process won’t be easy, and it won’t be fun, but when all else has failed, it just might work. The author of Die Fat or Get Tough: 101 Differences in Thinking Between Fat People and Fit People and Sex, Politics and Religion: How Delusional Thinking is Destroying America, Siebold does not want you to accept your body as it is, and he doesn’t believe you have to.

Siebold’s ebook Fat Loser! provides a set of strategies to address the underlying reasons diets fail. “This is psychological training,” Siebold said in a phone interview. In other words: it’s not the diets that fail, it’s the people.

“This is about personal responsibility. No one is coming to the rescue.”

The title is meant to be provocative, but not cruel. “It’s a play on words. A fat loser loses fat. I’ve lost fat. It’s meant to jolt people, to grab their attention.”

He’s mad as hell about the movement to normalize “fat,” in part because he believes people are not facing facts.

The recent announcement that fat-positive groups are lobbying for a fat Barbie is driving him crazy.

“All we are doing is saying it’s OK to have diabetes, heart disease and eat yourself to death. It’s giving up on the problem because people are afraid to face the truth.”

The book promotes “mental toughness” and strategies to make weight loss, as difficult as it is, more alluring than staying fat. And yes, he uses the word “fat” liberally. He ices the cake with it. Stuffs the goose with it.

The dropout rate for the free course he offers online at fatloser.com is about 50 per cent, he says. If you’re emotionally fragile, you may not get the humour of a guy on your computer screen talking “tubby” to you.

His message is about personal responsibility. Siebold, a former pro tennis player who blogs for The Huffington Post and works as a corporate motivational coach, says that after packing on about 40 pounds several years back he decided to look at the psychology of “fat” and “fit” people and see if his techniques for success in business could work for something as personal as changing your body.

The key is not which program you are on, Siebold says. Count calories, points, carbohydrates, he doesn’t care, as long as it’s reasonable and doctor approved. He’s not a nutritionist, but says he studied the habits and thought patterns of 500 fat and 500 fit people.

“Fat people eat for pleasure, fit people eat for health,” Siebold says. So you have to change how you get your pleasure, and train yourself to get pleasure from eating for something else: for vibrant health, for better sex, for more money.”

With a little effort, he says, over time you can build new mental habits.

Siebold says step one is to admit you are responsible for your weight and make a decision to change it. “You have to make a decision that you are going to do it. Without the decision, any diet is worthless.”

Siebold isn’t preaching to the 10-pounds overweight set, but the truly overweight and obese. In 2012, 18.4 per cent of Canadians aged 18 and older — roughly 4.7 million adults — reported height and weight that classified them as obese, according to Statistics Canada, with 41.3 per cent of men and 26.9 per cent of women reporting a height and weight that classified them as overweight. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 35.7 per cent of Americans are obese.

The decision is “comply or die,” says Siebold.

If you want to change, you have to commit to it, and commitment that is the tricky part, he says.

That’s where Siebold’s “mental toughness” comes in.

In order to “comply” you must change not just the way, but the why of how you eat: you have to get pleasure from eating for fitness, he says.

Siebold knows it sounds preposterous. He didn’t believe it was possible to get more pleasure from a plate of steamed vegetables and whole grains than from a pizza, either.

“In the beginning of eating the pizza you are feeling great. But half way through you are starting to feel badly about yourself. You’ve got to start the diet over again, you’ve just reinforced a bad habit. It’s a complete psychological game.”

His technique gets participants to convince themselves to eat for more energy, more vitality, and better health. Get a vision of what you want to look like, Siebold says, and live like when you have dropped the weight.

Bryan and Susan Burke of Portland, Oregon, are following Siebold’s program and they carefully went through the steps, including making a vision board covered with images not just of what they want to look like, but of what they want to do.

They duo, who lost a collective 141.5 pounds in 2013, recently took a trip to Hawaii. “Instead of planning what restaurants we were going to eat at, we were planning the activities we were going to participate in,” he says.

“We had tried diets before, but we didn’t have the mental toughness, and the strategies to change our habits.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.